Dinosaur Myths - Enchanted Learning Software

Advertisement.

EnchantedLearning.com is a user-supported site.
As a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.
Click here to learn more.

(Already a member? Click here.)

Our subscribers' grade-level estimate for this page: 2nd - 4th

ZoomDinosaurs.com
ALL ABOUT DINOSAURS!

What is a Dinosaur?

Dino Info Pages

Dinosaur Coloring Print-outs

Name That Dino

Biggest, Smallest, Oldest,...

Evolution of Dinosaurs

Dinos and Birds

Dino Myths

Debunking Dinosaur Myths
Do you know the answers to these dinosaur questions? Don't rely on popular images from dinosaur movies or cartoons! They're frequently wrong.
T. rex skull

Were all huge, prehistoric animals dinosaurs?
Did any dinosaurs swim or fly?
Were all the dinosaurs huge?
Did cavemen live alongside the dinosaurs?
Did all the dinosaurs live at the same time?
Did all the dinosaurs die out?
Why were the dinosaurs a failure?

1. Not all huge prehistoric animals were dinosaurs.

A lot of animals existed during the Mesozoic along with the dinosaurs. Some animals were closely related to the dinosaurs, like the pterosaurs

(which belong to the Order Archosauria as do the dinosaurs). Birds, however, are dinosaurs! Other animals, like the Dimetrodon

, which lived in the Paleozoic era before the dinosaurs existed, are more closely related to us than to the dinosaurs.

2. There were no flying dinosaurs or swimming dinosaurs.

All dinosaurs lived on the land; none of them lived in the seas or flew (until the birds)! Neither the flying pterosaurs

, nor the swimming ichthyosaurs

were dinosaurs, although all were closely related.

Some advanced meat-eating dinosaurs did develop feathers, and evolved into birds.

3. Not all dinosaurs were huge.

There were plenty of small and medium-sized dinosaurs. The smallest dinosaur yet discovered is Compsognathus, which was the size of a chicken!

4. People did not coexist with the dinosaurs (except for the birds).

Although the image of human cave dwellers hunting dinosaurs is well established in fiction, it is far from accurate. People didn't evolve until about 65 million years after the dinosaurs' extinction. Except for the birds, who are the sole surviving descendants of the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs and people are well separated in terms of geologic time. Dinosaur timeline

5. The dinosaurs didn't all live at the same time.

The dinosaurs roamed the Earth for about 165 million years. Different types of dinosaurs existed at different times. Dinosaur species evolved and went extinct throughout the Mesozoic (this is called background extinction).

In the Triassic period, the early dinosaurs were small, and most species died out in an extinction at the end of the Triassic period. In the Jurassic, many new dinosaur species evolved from the Triassic survivors, including the gigantic sauropods (like Apatosaurus

and Seismosaurus), Allosaurus

, and Stegosaurus

, to list but a few. Dinosaurs reached the height of their diversity during the Cretaceous; monstrous giant theropods (like T. rex

and Giganotosaurus), Ankylosaurus

, Maiasaura

and many other dinosaurs lived during that period. Despite popular images to the contrary, Stegosaurus never encountered T. rex.

6. Not all the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

Most of the dinosaur groups went extinct long before the K-T mass extinction of 65 million years ago. The remaining dinosaurs died out at that time, but many bird species (which are technically dinosaurs) survived it.

7. The dinosaurs were not a failure.

Various dinosaurs lived all around the Earth for about 165 million years. In comparison, people have only been around for about a million years. In terms of survival through geological time, the dinosaurs were long-lasting animals, probably leaving birds as their descendants.